Tag: Mad Magazine

  • Mad Art of Caricature and Made for Art

    So I was excited to get the mail this week and find my ordered copy of Tom Richmond’s The Mad Art of Caricature.   For the uninformed, Tom is one of the regular artists for Mad Magazine along with a host of other projects.  Pretty much most of the movie/tv spoofs of the last 10 years has been his work.  He also hosts a blog and has been an invaluable resource on copyright and caricatures.

    Here is my signed copy.

    On this blog post you can see Tom actually drawing the Alfred E Neuman to ship to me (ok maybe it wasn’t mine but it looks like it COULD be).

    The book looks amazing and I can’t wait to dig in and find out all the things I have been screwing up in my own caricatures.  But Tom, I think your foreign printer messed up a little with this insert.  I can’t find this book or this author online..haha

    On a separate note, I want to give a shout out to a Google Plus friend who has been very supportive over there.  Artist Eric Johnson has created a new site called Made for Art .   This is how he describes the site:

    If you enjoy browsing interesting, creative sites showcasing the talents of interesting, creative people, you should check out my new site. Whether its art, poetry, webcomics, ebooks, sculpture, photography, crafts or hobbies, etc., let MADE FOR ART be your link to Creative Minds .   And if you are a Creative Mind and would like to share your work and links on this unique, up and comings site, just let me know you’d like to be added to the MADE FOR ART circle!

    Head over there as he has featured my work and if you want Eric to include you in the future reach out and support him.

  • Al Jaffee’s Mad Life

    So I was browsing the bookstore last weekend and came across this book released last year.  It is Mary Lou Weisman’s biography of MAD Magazine illustrator/writer Al Jaffee.  Al illustrated the book.  I am amazed at his ability to do crowd scenes (something I avoid for good reason).

    Now for those who the name doesn’t register, anyone who has ever read a MAD Magazine is familiar with the Fold-In illustrations on the last page of almost every issue.  What is amazing is realizing that Al was able to do these fold-ins before being able to use a computer to line up the images and words.

    It is an incredible story of a boy who was born in the United States and dragged over to Lithuania TWICE by his homesick mother.  His father lost many a job and went broke trying to get his sons back and barely did so before Hitlers troops came to town.    One of my favorite quotes from Al is when he is describing the public baths.  In the shtetl he lived, his mother dragged him to the baths and spent the better part of the day covering his “privates.”  He complained so much that his mother found a gentlemen to take the boys in with the men.  Al said of the experience:

    Lots of men had what was called a killa, a form of rupture.  If you continue working at the jobs these people had to do – lifting logs and two-hundred-pound bundles into a drover’s care – little by little your intestines work their way down into your scrotum, eventually making it as big as a basketball.  No doctor in town could perform a hernia operation, so you’ve got these guys walking around with this basketball between their legs.  You can imagine how sickening that was for me.  I couldn’t look.  The rest of the package – the schlongs hanging down – wasn’t so inviting either.”

    No wonder at age 90 he still has a sick sense of MAD humor.  You can get the book at Amazon or many of your local bookstores.

  • Tom Richmond Caricature Tutorials

    One of my new favorite places on the web is visiting Tom Richmond’s blog. Tom is a freelance illustrator who does a lot of work for Mad Magazine.

    I marvel that with his workload he consistently publishes pretty much daily, with tips, news info, and caricatures he has done.

    He even has a section where he has highlighted several of his caricature drawing tutorials. Of course even reading his stuff doesn’t make my crap look any better but it definitely helps you look at the drawn image differently. I especially like how he explains the “Law of Constant Mass“.

    Whether you enjoy cartooning or enjoy seeing a great cartoonist…check it out.